My leg amped up again and throbbed. I crouched and sprawled in what was a patch of shade. Maybe I drowsed for a second then. My head lolled and I caught the woman creeping up on me with a fist clenched. “Back!” I grunted, motioning my weapon at her. Her slinking frame came to a standstill, and she gave me a forced, sullen grin.
All the time I expected monsters to come jumping out of the garbage and kill us all, like those mad boys they kept yapping about. I picked up on the woman’s apprehension; even the old man was edgy, making me nervous with his shifty feet and eyes darting to the surrounding dungheap. No matter, we’d all just sit tight until somebody showed.
At last, Billy came skipping out of the shimmering heat waves, eyes all a-glimmer, sporting a toothy grin like a cat that’s caught a fat mouse. Three rectangular-shaped objects he clutched in his tanned-brown hands.
“That was quick, Billy,” congratulated the old man. “Let me see them.”
The boy returned some words I couldn’t understand. Mumbles, child-like baby sounds. Was he a mute?
TK took the square blocks out of his hands, dug a small hole and fixed them up under the fuselage, one at the front, two at the back. He fired up the power on one and while I hobbled over in curiosity, he rubbed his gnarled hands. “The grav-push is heli-powered, courtesy of good old Silirus.”
He went around and pressed a button on each unit and they folded in a curious way as pressure rotors kicked in and the bottom gripped the sand and the top extended and clamped to the hull. It pushed up on it, like some kind of hydraulic arm. I gaped and stood in awe as the ship levitated two feet off the ground with a blue glow shining off the flattened sand and a similar glow off the underside of the AGs. Some gravo-thrust kept the tons of metal aloft. At least some advanced technology was still alive in these days of collapse. He activated some other gizmo on the side and used the remote control he’d snatched from Billy. It spurted jets of white steam from the AG’s lower flanks and pushed the Starrunner down the sandy ravine like a magno train. Wren and I loped after the old man and his prize.
“Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch—”
Sand dunes curled up to the edges of the mounds on either side.
“About that ride out of here…,” persisted Wren. “Shit! Incoming.”
We’d barely gone fifty feet when the woman dove into the sand drift. The whine of engines roared overhead.
I swore and scrambled for the nearest mini dung pile as a flash bomb flared, nearly singeing my hide and knocking me and snot-nose and the old man off our feet. Luckily the shell had missed Starrunner by a sliver and her reinforced battle plates took the shrapnel.
Two ships came angling out of the sky: lean, grey with cannons locked. I opened my mouth in a startled cry but Wren was already moving. She was skipping under my line of fire before I could do anything and jumping into the hatch. The first ship dropped down in the space between us and the mountain of crud.
I fucking knew it. Baer!
I got to my feet, dazed from the blast. I gimped along, somehow twisting my already savaged leg in the fall. My eyes stung, blinded by the bomb’s flare. The second ship waited in the sky, weapons trained.
“For fuck’s sake!” I was shaking my head, aiming too late before a blaster beam clipped the barrel, and I dropped it as it became sizzling hot.
The man, Baer’s man, wearing helmet and blue body armor, jumped out of the hatch, pointing his blaster at me. “Easy, chief. No stupid moves. Drop the other weapon. Edge back away from the ship.”
“Relax, no need to get excited.” I let the mini-glock that I’d tried to snatch from my belt fall at my toes.
“Move away,” he snarled. Two more emerged from the hatch to stand at either side.
While TK and Billy scuttled sideways like crabs, my mind worked to come up with a plan.
I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye—some slinking, mummy-wrapped shape. “Dung mite!” I cried, motioning to the pile to the man’s left.
He whirled and with a snarl, shot the head off some grotesque figure dressed in rags in a spray of blood and brains.
I licked my lips. “Good play, chief. Aim for the head, always the best percentage shot. Good thing I’m watching your back.”
“Cut the cute talk, smart man.”
“Let’s cut a deal here,” I wheedled. “You can see I’ve nothing. If I did, think I’d be hanging around with these grubbers?” I made a sweep of hand toward TK and the boy huddled in the refuse. “You go your way, I go mine. Maybe we can come to a solution.”
“You’re a dead man, Rusco. Baer wants you dead, and I do too for wasting Kriegs, plus a cut of the reward money on your head. Rub is, we have to bring you in alive.”
“Isn’t that interesting? I’m suddenly a celebrity. Worth more than Marvin K. Dicks.”
“Shut up. You’re a dead mother fuck—” The right front cannon of Starrunner lifted and a hell of a blast came spitting out from her barrel to fry the man on the spot.
Hot damn, that crafty skinhead knew how to shoot! I rolled as blaster fire came a hair’s breadth from my throat. The two other thugs crouching by the ship, rained fire at anything that moved. Hunched like a beetle, I ran up to the pile, grabbed my weapon, emptied it on the closest merc. He crumpled with a shot-out leg just as the damned
